Sonera SmartTrust Ltd., a leading developer of infrastructure solutions designed to enable secure mobile e-services, has marked its entry into the Japanese market by partnering with Toshiba Corporation.
The partnership, announced today, will ensure the delivery of Toshiba USIM (Universal Subscriber Identity Module) cards and vendor-independent USIM management systems to mobile operators in the Japanese 3G market. USIMs, like today's SIM cards, are an essential part of any service management infrastructure and play a central role in enabling mobile operators to deploy and manage secure and convenient 3G subscriber services.
Toshiba, the first Japanese manufacturer to embrace the development of smart card-based technologies 17 years ago, will package its own USIMs alongside SmartTrust's point-of-sale management platform, SmartTrust Card Station. Card Station allows a mobile operator's point-of-sales staff to locally manage a subscriber's SIM/USIM; this may include updating operator roaming lists, transferring phone books or simply copying the contents of an old SIM card to a new USIM. Users will also be able to perform card-file diagnostics.
"For those operators using USIMs from multiple vendors, the package will not only enable operators to support Toshiba's own USIMs, but those from all major card vendors. This provides the operator with a single, unified point of control for the management of an entire subscriber-base," explains Raiko Salmela, Alliance Manager at Sonera SmartTrust Ltd. "With its extensive partnership network, that now covers over 20 SIM/USIM card vendors, SmartTrust is the only software vendor in the world with the proven position of delivering card-vendor independent SIM management platforms."
"The launch of the SmartTrust Card Station also opens a natural path for SmartTrust to begin offering other complimentary USIM management platforms to mobile operators, including card independent OTA (over the air) platforms for remote service and device management. Ultimately, operators will have access to a complete card vendor-independent logistics system," adds Salmela.
"Japan will shortly introduce the world's first 3G services, and we see this as a great opportunity," says Kenji Miura, Senior Manager of Sales Promotion Dept. -- Smart Card, Media Card Division in Toshiba's Digital Media Network Company. "We will introduce our own USIM next year, but by working with SmartTrust, the world leader in USIM management systems, we will also be able to offer total support for the SmartTrust Card Station in the Japanese market. We see this complementary partnership as bringing benefits to both partners and acting as a spur to the early market penetration of 3G."
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